Chasing Florence Keyser: The Arrival of the Great Depression in Yellowstone National Park in August 1931
By Bruce T. Gourley
On a hot summer’s day1 the City of Brotherly Love simmered with discontent. Local newspaper stories reeled off a litany of troubling news. Philadelphians reading the daily Inquirer on Saturday, August 1, 1931 learned that President Herbert Hoover was gathering over the weekend with key cabinet members and congressmen to discuss ongoing “unemployment and wage problems.”
They also read of a new disaster in the West, “a grasshopper plague, an aftermath of last year’s drought… destroying crops in the Dakotas, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota.” According to the news report, the federal government had “already extended some assistance in some portions of these localities and the Red Cross is actively engaged in relief work … the problem will soon be taken care of.” Still further away, across the ocean, Germany faced “impending economic ruin” and England fared but little better.2
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